As one of the weird, keyboard-only players, I literally cannot think of a single time in all of my replaying of the single player game where I lamented the lack of vertical camea movement.

There are times when it's helpful when doing particularly tricky movements (crawla chain-bouncing), but I think it's mostly useless for the majority of players. If you didn't have it, you quickly wouldn't miss it.

As one of the weird, keyboard-only players, I literally cannot think of a single time in all of my replaying of the single player game where I lamented the lack of vertical camea movement.

There are times when it's helpful when doing particularly tricky movements (crawla chain-bouncing), but I think it's mostly useless for the majority of players. If you didn't have it, you quickly wouldn't miss it.

Former keyboard-only user here. On my end I can confirm there were times were I really needed to look up/down. An example would be after being launched by an spring. Seeing clearly the place where you land makes you feel a lot more secure on certain occasions, also in my point of view makes the game feel a bit more... Inmersive. I personally like to admire the landscape on some levels, a thing I could only do fully with the mouselook enabled, specifically with vertical camera movement. So yeah if I have to be honest mouselook really changed my experience of playing the game. I wouldn't call it "mostly useless" if you know how to properly use it.

Weighing in a bit more here, I turned vertical mouse look off as soon as I was able to find the option because it made me uncomfortable when the view to bobbed up-and-down as I made normal left-and-right movements. I've tried to turn on the vertical mouse look a handful of times, but I've never found any use for it. The way maps and platforms are laid out makes looking down wholly unnecessary, and if hazards are placed above the player, that's a problem with hazard placement, not with the camera angle.

If this were a normal, analog 3D platformer, of course we could expect players to know how to manipulate a full range camera. But in SRB2, it is a jarring first experience for new users and a redundancy for the advanced users.

Edit: In order for vertical camera movement to be useful in SRB2, the entire camera system would have to be reworked from scratch. The camera doesn't revolve around the character as in typical 3D platformers. Moving the camera down looks at the ground BEHIND your character instead of the ground at your character's feet, and looking upward is similarly nonsensical. This means you'll be scrolling your character off the screen if you want to move the camera up or down enough to actually see anything, and even then, that little tiny bit extra you can see is functionally useless because of where the camera is position. It's been functionally useless for gameplay as far as I've been able to tell, and it stretches polygons (in software and OpenGL) in ways that make the game look even more dated.

Weighing in a bit more here, I turned vertical mouse look off as soon as I was able to find the option because it made me uncomfortable when the view to bobbed up-and-down as I made normal left-and-right movements.

Again, do suspect that this would either be down to the mouse sensitivity being high by default, or human error depending on how much the mouse moved forward/backward.
But hey, this is your choice that you've made after finding out you can change it, so I can support that.
My concern, however, is that a fair amount of the newer players won't even know about it, potentially even never finding out before ditching the game.

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Edit: In order for vertical camera movement to be useful in SRB2, the entire camera system would have to be reworked from scratch. The camera doesn't revolve around the character as in typical 3D platformers. Moving the camera down looks at the ground BEHIND your character instead of the ground at your character's feet, and looking upward is similarly nonsensical. This means you'll be scrolling your character off the screen if you want to move the camera up or down enough to actually see anything, and even then, that little tiny bit extra you can see is functionally useless because of where the camera is position. It's been functionally useless for gameplay as far as I've been able to tell, and it stretches polygons (in software and OpenGL) in ways that make the game look even more dated.

This however is an interesting point, actually, which I was even discussing with one of the people that was quoted in my previous posts, since I do happen to know of a Doom-engine game that has such a third-person camera.
You might wonder how it goes around the software looking-up/down issue, and it actually restricts the camera from going above/under a certain angle if you use the software renderer. all the while also zooming in a bit in the third person cameraCamera angle restriction in third-person, Camera angle restriction in first-person
OpenGL is the default setting, however, and thus anyone who didn't turn on software mode won't be restricted by the limited camera angle, with a screenshot here demonstrating an angle looking down way more than software can.
Either way, this camera would be more orthodox with other 3D games instead of being like... ...Er... ...Looking up/down in 2D Sonic, I guess?
However, if the third person camera is changed, it would possibly be preferable if the "legacy" camera is kept in as an option for those old players that are too used to it, to quiet down the potential complaining.

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<SpectrumMK2> I though we are making a tower?
<[ME]> Apparently the tower is a conga line now

SRB2 used to limit the camera angle like that in software. I'm not sure why it doesn't anymore. Either way I think immediately jumping on "vertical mouselook is always bad" is rather rash when you consider that both the default mouselook values are a little high, and the bug/feature(?) of fullscreen where lower resolutions have you turning faster. They even said in the video that the slightest twitches of the mouse turn you incredibly far, that's my experience with the default mouse sensitivity in low resolutions. While it's generally not that bad for me in windowed mode or native resolution. I wouldn't be surprised if the video had people at default resolution (640x400) on 1080p monitors in fullscreen. Because that's all the default. Look into the fullscreen mouse sensitivity and how high the mouse sensitivity is by default, then go to more drastic solutions if the problem is still there.

If it wasn't because I already know SRB2 well and tend to go into options of games before playing them, and then vertical mouse-look was disabled by default, I would probably think something along the lines of "when I move the mouse left, the camera turns left, but when I move it down, the camera does not turn down, ergo the camera is unable to ever turn down, which is pretty bad for a platformer in 2010+" or such.

And if vertical mouse-look was enabled, I would probably think something along the lines of "when I move the mouse down, the camera turns down, ergo I can just move the mouse a little up and down to look around".

So while yes, you can just go to the options and enable it if it's disabled by default... would you even go to the options, anyway? "You" as an individual might, but "you" as generally everyone trying out the game? I'm going to assume that far from everyone will do so. Even then, if you don't know that there's an option to enable vertical mouse-look (again, people might think there's not an option for it if the mouse by default does move the camera horizontally but not vertically), how far would you delve into the mouse options if the horizontal sensitivity feels nice enough by default (which it preferably should)?

So yes, I, too, am strongly against disabling vertical mouse-look by default. I wouldn't mind if the vertical sensitivity was lowered, as long as it would still feel fairly intuitive to use by default.

The default settings should not be nice and simple, but rather nice and intuitive, and there can be a big difference between those things. (This goes for all games, of course, not just SRB2.)

First thing I did when I noticed the camera was turning too fast is lower mouse x and y sensitivity, currently set it to 17 for both axis (mousesens and mouseysense) and this made the camera far more controllable and not shake-y imo, I don't think setting mouselook off by default would benefit new players much, soon you're going to have people complaining about not being able to look below them for precise platforming or landing after a spring launch, only to realize they forgot to check the options (can't blame them for that, It's like the default / recommended settings go against how the game plays) or they missed the mouselook toggle option, I believe the Real problem is how fast the mouse speed is set by default and not being able to look up/down.

So yes, I, too, am strongly against disabling vertical mouse-look by default. I wouldn't mind if the vertical sensitivity was lowered, as long as it would still feel fairly intuitive to use by default.

I'm thinking that moving the mouse vertically should just barely nudge the camera in that direction by default. Enough to know that the camera does move vertically (so that the player can increase the sensitivity in the settings if they want to), but not enough that it makes a significant difference to your field of view.

Quick question for those bringing up issues with mouse sensitivity: if you can still play SRB2 with srb2dd.exe, how does mouse sensitivity compare on there for you (using the default values or whatever)?

Personally, I'd just have the whole mousesens and mouseysens covered in that tutorial thing you guys are making. Instead of having a basic tutorial where it just teaches you how to jump and roll, expand it a bit. Say you get to a section, and the game says something along the lines of "Good Job!, If you feel your cameras turning to quickly up and down or side to side, did you know you can change that? Give it a try. Try changing your horizontal speed to 10." Nope sorry you changed it to 11, try again. Good Job! Now try changing your vertical speed. Good Job!" You can also cover other important areas for new players. "Try changing your spin button. Good Job, change it back to its default now. Good Job!"
I understand that some people might find this annoying, but there are certain things that are just better to smash into new players heads early on so they don't go through any problems later on, even if it means a minor annoyance to the player in the tutorial.
One more thing after watching some of that video.... shouldn't chase cam off be the default? That'd also help a lot.

Personally I've always played the game with keyboard (unless playing multiplayer modes), and I don't remember using look up or down for anything, even knowing it was there.

Anyway, wouldn't it be better just to have a little tutorial in the game? After the first start, the game could ask once if you want to try it or not, and it could be an option in the main menu. I know that good games are supposed to not need it, but like you say, this is a platforming game with FPS controls. When I played Metroid Prime back in the day, having the game explain me the controls was just what I needed, and that's a game that used all the GameCube's pad controls. If you really want to help newbie players, that would help a lot more than hiding controls in the menu. That way you could tell the player too what options are in the menu, in case he/she wants to change them later.

The basic thing it feels a lot of you are missing is that this isn't about polling. It doesn't matter how many people show up saying "vertically controlling the camera is essential" and "I never use it". People here know enough about the game to change the settings to suit their tastes. What we care about here is the opinions and reactions of people who are legitimately new to SRB2, and those people aren't going to be coming onto our forums to provide their opinion. There ARE methods of determining what true newbies want, though. Here are a few of the methods we use to attempt to gather that information:

Looking at opinions on the game across the internet. Finding threads on SRB2 on forums unrelated to us can be a great source of candid feedback from newbies.

Watching blind playthroughs of the game, like the one linked in this thread. While they often won't say directly what they're problems are, we can often infer it by watching what they struggle with. This is also a wonderful source for finding places in the level design where players get lost so we can try to give those places more direction.

Actually presenting the game to people unfamiliar with it. This might sound shocking, but I have actively tested the game on newbies by handing friends who don't know about the game the reigns and seeing how they play.

Most of the conclusions you see me state about what "newbies want" is based on data gathered in this manner. One of the things I tried to do in 2.1 was make the game more newbie-friendly, but I totally failed because I hadn't gathered nearly enough data, or was ignoring the really problematic things. For instance, this is why there's that "tip" for Sonic telling you about braking, skidding for when you do so, and various other interface features trying to teach you things in 2.1. It turns out that wasn't nearly enough. This is the core reason behind things like automatic braking and directionchar, along with a lot of the other interface changes you've seen in previews. We really want to improve our new player experience, because it turns most players off from our game when they can't grasp how to play.

The default settings aren't actually necessarily what we expect new players to play with, even! The tutorial clearly states that you can change the settings and there's already text explicitly saying that you can change, say, the mouse sensitivity. What the defaults are designed to do is present a clear starting point that's going to help the most players possible. The less complexity in the default controls, the better they are for that purpose.

What we care about here is the opinions and reactions of people who are legitimately new to SRB2, and those people aren't going to be coming onto our forums to provide their opinion.

First of all, while I know that obviously won't automatically make everyone (nor even most) visit our forums, why not add a link to them, like, in the game tutorial for example. Chances are people who want to get involved more in the game and/or its community (or even just want some help) will actually do so, and I hope you know just how important the forum/community is for this game. Not the main site, the actual forums.

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The tutorial clearly states that you can change the settings and there's already text explicitly saying that you can change, say, the mouse sensitivity.

Okay, that is awesome. Why not text explicitly saying that you can disable vertical mouselook if you find yourself having trouble with it? Or if you feel like it isn't particularly useful to you? Once the sensibility adjustments get applied to the exe, of course, if some are needed.
That would definitely help fight the issue with people oh so unaccustomed to a game mechanic (mouselook with vertical) that, despite being maybe unconventional in platformers, is the standard in many other genres, and definitely not unheard of.
But of course, we cannot expect players to have ever played other games, am I right? Or grasp the concept of ...simply moving the camera back up once you realize mouse down means camera down, and in the future maybe trying to just move the mouse to the side if you want to just look to the side. Again, this when the mouse sensitivity issues get sorted out.

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The less complexity in the default controls, the better they are for that purpose.

This is exactly the kind of statement that ends up producing ever more dumbed down versions of games. No, simple doesn't always mean better.
Would you cut the number of controls of a plane simulator game in half because "Nobody ever uses flaps anyway" or "Newbies have trouble with flaps at first"? or actually improve your tutorial on them?
This game isn't just "Sonic 1/2/3 but in 3D", it has way more depth to it, and hiding this away behind a default setting means people won't be getting the full experience the game has to offer. Be it crawla bouncing, or seeing where you're meant to go next in an ascending section (past just the next platform) or even just admiring the levels themselves (who knows, that up there could be a secret cave...).
SRB2 can be beautiful if you play it at its fullest potential, let's teach people how to do that with a badass tutorial instead of having people look for a setting they might never even find.

Anyone going to answer my question from earlier? I believe mouse sensitivity didn't used to be so high (or dependent on resolution in fullscreen) before we moved to SDL2 (and may still be the case in srb2dd.exe), but I need people to verify this since I can't use my main desktop computer right now. Nor can I reliably go on Discord with the awful Wi-Fi connection on this laptop.

Anyone going to answer my question from earlier? I believe mouse sensitivity didn't used to be so high (or dependent on resolution in fullscreen) before we moved to SDL2 (and may still be the case in srb2dd.exe), but I need people to verify this since I can't use my main desktop computer right now. Nor can I reliably go on Discord with the awful Wi-Fi connection on this laptop.

Did get a reply about it when bringing it up.

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james - Today at 2:16 AM
It's high because of the switch to SDL_ReletiveMouse or whatever it's called exactly. They didn't bother to lower the default sensitivity.
As for being dependant on fullscreen, I'm not quite sure. It seems consistent with green resolutions, but don't take my word.

And I can confirm that, while trying 1.09 or 2.0 after being used to 2.1, the mouse sensitivity felt quite a bit different.

Also, just tried windowed DirectDraw myself, mouse movement does feel more sluggish than windowed SDL2 even on 1280x800, a green resolution.

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Quote:

<SpectrumMK2> I though we are making a tower?
<[ME]> Apparently the tower is a conga line now

Also, is "staring at the floor" a major issue? Especially with lower vertical mouse sensivity? The camera can be brought back to the center in matter of seconds, there's even a key for doing that.

Yes, this is a very common issue with newer players. At all mouse sensitivities, not just high ones. Part of why I know it's such a problem is because one of the questions asked from newbies is "can I turn looking up and down off?"